HowardForums is a discussion board dedicated to mobile phones with over 1,000,000 members and growing!

For your convenience HowardForums is divided into 7 main sections; marketplace, phone manufacturers, carriers, smartphones/PDAs, general phone discussion, buy sell trade and general discussions. Just scroll down to see them!

Only registered members may post questions, contact other members or search our database of over 8 million posts. Why don't you join us today!

Most intriguing among the entries here is the "jackpot" series, which may or may not turn out to be the rumoured, foldable Samsung Galaxy X. For more on the list and to see how XDA found it see the three links immediately below.

You can click the image above to see a video message from an attorney at Girard Gibbs, an American law firm that launched a class action suit against LG for boot loop issues related to the G4, G5, Nexus 5X, V10 and V20. Android Police reported yesterday that the firm had reached a settlement with LG, one with a fairly generous payout for affected users: $425 USD cash or a $700 credit towards a new LG device.

Some time after the Android Police report was published Girard Gibbs' LG arbitration site went offline. On that site was a link to a SurveyMonkey form, and an indication that LG owners could still join the class action suit up until February 12th. So why did the site suddenly go dark? Here's a commenter on AP:

I just called the law firm directly. They seemed frustrated about the initial launch, apparently this was not for the general public. The survey is now password protected. This is closed, you can't join if you weren't part of it prior.

If you're a U.S. citizen and an owner of one of the aforementioned LG devices, you might want to bookmark that Girard Gibbs page, or at least keep an eye on this r/Android reddit thread. Good luck!

If you're financing your ultra-premium Samsung flagship through your carrier, as most folks in North America do, it's entirely understandable that you'd want to de-bloat your phone—see this post from 2013 for some examples of Canadian carrier bloat on a Galaxy S4. One of the easier ways to do this has been to flash a different firmware onto your device; though Samsung phones are region-locked it's been possible to flash an in-region but non-carrier version of your device's firmware using tools and guides from XDA.

Until now, that is: XDA reported yesterday that the January security update for the S8, S8+ and Note8 also includes a new bootloader, one that prevents the flashing of unlocked firmware on carrier-branded phones. If you try to change the firmware on your carrier-branded device you will hard-brick that device. Unlocked hardware purchased from Samsung or third parties seems unaffected.

Though not explicitly stated by anyone on XDA or the cross-post to r/Android, it sounds to me like this "update" would also prevent users from flashing custom ROMs onto late model carrier-branded Samsungs.

Something rather interesting is happening in Canada's westernmost province. While Uber and Lyft await the green light to begin operations there, a slew of homegrown alternatives has popped up from seemingly out of nowhere to fill in the gap. I've read mention of no less than eight available services—four of which I was able to find sites and app store listings for:

As you can probably surmise, at least half of these apps cater to the local Chinese-Canadian community. GoKabu was the one that, in a Global News report, was accused of refusing to accept non-Chinese fares; the $1,150 CAD fines for drivers accepting rides using these currently illegal apps might have something to do with that.

What we're looking at here is an unannounced Acer tablet—photographed, tweeted, then deleted by an attendee at a London trade show. What makes this particular tablet different than all the other Android tablets currently on the market is that its actually not running Android at all, but instead a touch-friendly version of Chrome OS.

More advanced browser tools including developer tools, a task manager, and a powerful bookmark manager

5 years of software and security updates delivered by Google rather than the PC maker

All this plus full support for Android apps, just like the Android tablet you're using/not using now.

Unfortunately it's entirely unknown if Acer is actually planning on bringing this device to market, or if it's just a one-off proof of concept for internal use. Whatever the case, it's certainly an intriguing idea.

Security researcher Elliot Alderson seems to have uncovered a new privacy breach in OxygenOS, the default ROM on OnePlus devices. The good news is that it only applies to the latest Oreo beta for the OnePlus 5T. The bad news? Well, just about everything else.

The changelog for OxygenOS Open Beta 2 lists a new clipboard application, which is apparently the source of the suspicious activity. Alderson's first tweet, in the screen grab above, notes what appears to be a keyword logger, and is connected to a zip file which appears to phone home to TeddyMobile, a Chinese analytics company that also does business with OnePlus's sister brands Oppo and Vivo. One of the services offered by TeddyMobile is "number verification", and according to Alderson this clipboard app is sending your phone number and device IMEI directly to TeddyMobile—along with your text messages, even bank account numbers.

OnePlus has yet to publicly respond to any of this. Until they do it's safe to say that you should not install the latest Oreo beta on your OnePlus 5T. In fact, now would be a great time to look into flashing a custom ROM instead.

In a press release yesterday Samsung confirmed that their next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S9, will be revealed on Sunday, February 25th to kick off the 2018 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

As the teaser suggests, an improved camera system will be a marquee feature of the new devices—that is, the S9 and S9+. According to a reputable leaker on Twitter the big deal this year will be a variable aperture on the rear facing camera lenses:

It's been over a year since Pebble went bust. Fitbit, who bought the company's technical assets and absorbed some of the team, pledged to keep Pebble's servers running until the end of 2017. We're now well past that expiry date, and the day may soon come when Fitbit decides to turn out the lights, leaving users with no access to weather data, voice replies or an app store.

At that point Pebblers will have three options: make do with what they've got, regain the ability to sideload apps and watchfaces with GadgetBridge or install Rebble, an entirely new OS, on their watch.

Progress on Rebble has been slow—as you can probably imagine, building a custom smartwatch operating system from scratch is no small feat. But this week the team posted a rare update, one that immediately shot to the top of r/Pebble. Here's a summary of their progress thus far:

New splash screen (see above);

Rebble can now be run in an emulator;

Bluetooth is now working;

Preliminary support for Pebble apps and watchfaces.

With such slow progress you might be asking, why even bother? The Rebble team has an answer for that:

It’s a fact that no new Pebble hardware is being produced, ever. It’s been over a year since Pebble closed its doors and as such there are a finite number of devices out there, and their ZEBRA connectors are going wonky, their cases are suddenly ingressing water, and their batteries are getting one charge closer to failure every 4-10 days. But while Pebble hardware may remain frozen in time, technology marches on. New versions of Android and iOS continue to be released, along with new hardware, and with every major release we all cringe and utter “will our Pebbles still work”? Well that’s part of why we’re building new apps, appstores and firmware - but another exciting reason for creating our own open-source, FreeRTOS-based OS is that it opens the door to other Pebble fans or even large smartwatch manufacturers in Shenzhen to build their own new hardware in the spirit of Pebble/Rebble!

While GadgetBridge will probably remain my go-to solution, what this community of developers is trying to accomplish is certainly admirable. If you want to get involved see the first link directly below.

UK-based Integral Memory has somehow managed to cram half a terabyte onto a tiny microSD card, beating the previous record for diminutive storage of 400GB set by Sandisk last year. Integral's Smartphone and Tablet microSDHC/XC Class 10 UHS-I U1 goes on sale next month. Don't expect it to be cheap.

It's actually not quite as fast as the previous record-holder; while the Sandisk is capable of 100MB/s transfers Integral's new card can only do up to 90MB/s. However, its Class 10 and UHS-I U1 specification guarantees a minimum write speed of 10MB/s, so direct capture of Full HD video from your smartphone's camera won't be a problem.

For more information see the press release and product listing immediately below.

AT&T took the crown for best average 4G latency at 58.3 ms—which actually sounds pretty terrible until you take into consideration the huge reporting area. Some more details on OpenSignal's testing:

Reporting period: October 1st to December 30th, 2017
Devices included in test: 237,213
Total measurements: 5,928,296,946

To find the best-performing carrier for your area you can see a list of 33 regional results at the first link directly below. And remember, any suspicions of these findings can be addressed by downloading the app for Android or iOS and joining the pool of test devices for the next report!

Wow, that’s really not any better than Verizon or T-Mobile. It’s small cell time! Idk why nobody has deployed any around there yet. Last time I checked building permits for Orland it was just permits...